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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27648601">debrief</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluehorses/pseuds/bluehorses'>bluehorses</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, S15 Spoilers, complete and utter denial - freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 20:13:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,063</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27648601</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluehorses/pseuds/bluehorses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dean Winchester,” Cas says lowly. Dean knows that voice. It’s the voice Cas likes to use before he throws things into walls.</p><p>“Oh, shit,” Dean says.</p><p>“I leave you alone,” Cas snarls, striding forward, “for two weeks—”</p><p>“Two and a half,” Dean protests. "Come on—”</p><p>“And you get yourself <em>killed?”</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>964</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In hindsight, he should’ve realized he was in deep shit the second he woke up on the couch.</p><p>The bunker doesn’t have many windows. Sam, periodically, seems to have conniptions over this, and buys crap like vitamin tablets and sun lamps to clutter the surfaces with—but Dean, blessed with the all-encompassing wisdom of being the oldest, knows good luck when he sees it. The bunker’s lack of natural light makes it the best place on earth to survive a hangover in. Hands down. </p><p>“Oh, <em> fuck</em>,” he groans, muffled into a throw pillow. “Jesus.”</p><p>No more rum before bed, he decides hazily. No more rum, ever, actually. Rum always does him dirty. Dean squirms, trying to get his bearings: ten fingers, ten toes, all accounted for. One leg on the couch, and one dangling off it. His back hurts like a bitch, but that’s probably what he deserves for pulling stunts like this past forty. Sam’s in the room, somewhere—he can hear him breathing and feel his stare. The back of his neck prickles.</p><p>“S’the time?” Dean mumbles.</p><p>There’s a long, pointed silence. Dean rolls his eyes (<em>mature</em>, Samuel), and struggles upright on the couch, scrubbing a hand across his face. He feels a blanket slide off his shoulders.</p><p>“Dude,” he says muzzily. “How much did I drink last night, what the fuck—”</p><p>He sits up wrong, somehow; jolts his body in a direction it really, really doesn’t want to go. Sparks start spitting down the length of his spine. Dean hisses through his teeth, one hand flying to his back, and freezes still when his hand makes contact with the familiar, unmistakable feeling of gauze under a bandage.</p><p>The memories shift into focus all at once: the vamps, the fight, the barn. The sudden, flaring pain in his back. Knowing he was… </p><p>And then, here. Waking up on the couch. </p><p>Dean frowns.</p><p>“What the fuck,” he repeats, rubbing his forehead. As he speaks, a figure looms from the armchair in the corner and stalks forward. “Sam?”</p><p>“Dean Winchester,” Cas says lowly. Dean knows that voice. It’s the voice Cas likes to use before he throws things into doors.</p><p>“Oh, shit,” Dean says.</p><p>“I leave you alone,” Cas snarls, still striding forward, “for two weeks—”</p><p>“Two and a half,” Dean protests. "Come on—”</p><p>“And you get yourself <em> killed?” </em></p><p>“Woah, woah, woah,” Dean says, scrambling backwards against the couch cushions. “Listen, in my defense—we were—” </p><p>Cas is cradling his jaw in both hands. Dean’s brain takes the opportunity to fritz out and restart.</p><p>“I healed you while you were sleeping,” Cas informs him curtly. “Does it hurt?” </p><p>His thumbs are stroking Dean’s cheekbones. Dean swallows.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Cas just stares at him, impassive and unmoved. Dean feels his face start to burn.</p><p>“Sorta,” he mutters.</p><p>The brush of grace is a soft, humming thing, flooding out from Cas's fingers on his forehead and soothing the ache in Dean’s spine down to nothing. It comes with the kind of confident ease Cas hasn’t had in a long time. </p><p>Dean blinks.</p><p>“Am I dead?” he asks seriously.</p><p>“Currently?” Cas frowns, looking contemplative. He pushes his fingers into Dean’s hair. “No. After your brother is finished with you… I find it hard to say.”</p><p>“Mm,” Dean mutters. He leans into the palm of Cas’s hand with a barely-there sigh. So sue him, whatever. Cas is here, and he’s good at this. Dean’s too tired to question it.</p><p>“You were nearly dead,” Cas says quietly. “By the time I reached you.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Dean blurts out, which feels like a pretty stupid thing to say, once he’s done it: too clumsy for the point he wants to make, but too small to encapsulate whatever it is that Cas brings out in him. The feeling that lives behind his ribs.</p><p>“You…” he swallows. “You’re—”</p><p>“Yes,” Cas agrees. His fingers keep carding through Dean’s hair. Then he adds, soft and low: “it’s good to see you, Dean.”</p><p>There’s a bang from outside the living room door—somewhere near the library, if Dean had to guess. Cas pulls away, tilting his head. </p><p>“In here,” he calls out. “He’s awake.”</p><p>“<em>Dude</em>,” Dean hisses.</p><p>“He was going to find out eventually,” Cas murmurs, settling on the couch next to him with the prim, irritating movements of an asshole who thinks they’re in the right. “Or were you planning to hide from your younger brother for the rest of your natural life?”</p><p>Dean opens his mouth to say <em> yes, actually, </em> but he doesn’t get the chance. The living room door bangs open.</p><p>“Hello,” Sam says evenly.</p><p>Dean winces.</p><p>“Sammy—”</p><p>“I was talking to Cas,” Sam says. “Hey, Cas.”</p><p>“Hello, Sam,” Cas offers, like a traitor.</p><p>Sam crosses the room. He folds himself in the armchair facing the couch. He cracks the tab on the beer in his hand, taking a long sip. Then, finally, he looks Dean in the eye.</p><p>“If you ever,” he says, dangerously slow. “<em>Ever</em>, think about pulling that bullshit martyr crap on me again, I’m keying your car.”</p><p>“Understood,” Dean mutters.</p><p>“I mean it, Dean. No more getting hammered before hunts,” Sam says, ticking his terms off on his fingers. “No more walking into vamp fights with the wrong gear, no more lying to me about tetanus shots, goddamnit, I saw your medical records at the hospital—”</p><p>“All right!” Dean interrupts. “Okay, Jesus. I get it.” </p><p>Cas frowns, shifting in his seat. He turns to Dean.</p><p>“Were you being reckless?” There’s a hint of that wall-throwing, heaven’s fury, Angel-of-the-Lord thing in his voice again. “In my absence?”</p><p>“No,” Dean says.</p><p>“Yup.” Sam takes another slow sip of beer, checking his phone. “Big time. And then he got himself <em>impaled</em>.”</p><p>Dean kind of wants to bitch at him for that. He would, normally, on any other day of the year—but Sam looks haggard, tired, and kinda small, for a grown man who’s been over six feet tall since high school.</p><p>“Hey,” he says. “Sam.”</p><p>Sam’s eyes flick up to meet his, flat and surly.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“C’mere,” Dean tells him, jerking his head—and this is another testament, he likes to think, to the all-encompassing wisdom of being the oldest—because for all the posturing, for all the silence and the glaring and everything else, Sam doesn’t hesitate, and he doesn’t pull away for a long time.</p><p>“Stop dying on me,” Sam tells him thickly, muffled by Dean’s shirt. “Okay? Just… get a new hobby, freak.”</p><p>“Yeah, all right,” Dean mutters. “Deal.”</p><p>Sam huffs out a laugh. He scrubs his shirt sleeve over his face as he pulls back, clearing his throat.</p><p>“I’m gonna shower,” he says. “You need anything?”</p><p>“Nah,” Dean says. Cas’s hand is brushing his on the couch. Without looking, Dean takes it. “Trust me. I’m all set.”</p><p>They both watch the door as Sam’s footsteps fade down the hallway. Eventually, Cas sighs.</p><p>“Dean." There it is again: that voice, filled with the sure certainty of someone who’s seen Dean’s soul, held it in his hands, and still stuck around afterwards. Warning, reproachful, and undeniably fond. “What did you do—” </p><p>Dean kisses him, one hand fisted in Cas’s tie. He doesn't plan on it; just follows his impulses and reels Cas in ‘til he’s close enough to touch, fitting his free hand around the back of his neck, tugging him down and licking into his mouth, gentle and slow. It’s easy, after he’s done it once, to dart closer and keep doing it. Cas makes this soft, surprised sort of sound—and Dean decides, kissing his bottom lip, across his jaw, that he’ll do whatever it takes to hear it again. Anything in the world.</p><p>“So,” he murmurs. “First night on earth. You got any plans?”</p><p>The corners of Cas’s lips quirk.</p><p>“One,” he admits, leaning closer. Dean’s mouth parts on instinct, letting him in.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean’s morning, so far, has been a big improvement on the one before it. For one thing, it started in a bed—his bed, memory foam mattress, clean sheets, the works. There’s no headache threatening to blind him. His back’s still sorta sore, prickling like an old bruise when he moves, but everything feels warm and hazy, draped in a layer of sleep.</p><p>Yeah, Dean decides, yawning into his pillow. Not too shabby. Not bad at all.</p><p>The bunker’s quiet. Can’t be later than six, seven at most. With any luck, he can squeeze another hour in before Sam starts lumbering around in the bathroom a few doors down—and he’s almost out, his awareness just starting to drift, when the back of his neck prickles.</p><p>His feet are cold. </p><p>Dean frowns. He fidgets, trying to drag the comforter back over them, but there’s nothing to drag. It’s shrunk in the night to a single corner, draped pitifully over his legs. It slides away when he sits against the headboard, scrubbing his face with both palms.</p><p>“The hell…?” Dean mutters.</p><p>The lump of comforter next to him makes a muffled, disgruntled sound. Dean scowls at it.</p><p>“Cas,” he says. “Move.”</p><p>There’s no response.</p><p>“Cas.” Dean kicks the comforter with one cold foot. “Hey, <em>Castiel. </em>Pain in my ass angel of Thursday.”</p><p>Cas lifts his head from under the blankets, squinting at him.</p><p>“I don’t like your tone,” he mutters.</p><p>A dark cowlick of hair flops over his forehead. Dean's mouth twitches—and Cas must see it because he tilts his head, his furrowed brow deepening into a frown.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“None of your business.” Dean taps him on the thigh. “Come on, cowboy. Get up.”</p><p>He’s been told a hundred times over—by Cas, Sam, multiple bestaries, Cas again, and a bunch of Cas’s stony-faced siblings—that angels don’t need any shuteye. Hell, he’s not arguing with that part. Even now, when the world’s governed by a different God than the one who made it, it still seems to hold water. He does, however, have a few pointers he’d like to add. Sure, angels don’t need it, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of it. They’re less cranky when they get it. And there’s one, in Dean’s experience, who likes it so much he’s achieved the impossible: the first celestial being to truly, genuinely, hate getting up early. </p><p>“I don’t want to get <em>up.</em>” Cas’s voice is low and thick with sleep. The air quotes are palpable. “I want to lie down.”</p><p>“Yeah? So did I.” Dean prods him again, merciless, until Cas slaps his hand away. “Then you hoarded all the blankets like a bitch, and now here we are.”</p><p>In one sweeping motion, the mountain of covers next to him rises like a wave. Cas pushes himself upright, squinting as he emerges, his flushed cheeks catching the light of Dean’s table lamp. His shirt says, in faded gray capitals, <em>Back in Black: World Tour ‘81</em>. It’s tugged down over one shoulder. Dean reaches out and pulls it back up, swiping his thumb over Cas’s exposed collarbone as he does—it’d be easy to sling one thigh over Cas’s lap and settle there, easy to push him onto the sheets and doze with his head on Cas’s chest. Maybe he could steal back some of the body heat he’s been hoarding all night. </p><p>Right on cue, the pipes in the ceiling start to rattle. Dean can hear the distant hum of the shower coming to life. Cas tilts his head.</p><p>“Sam is awake.”</p><p>“There goes all the hot water,” Dean murmurs, stretching both arms up over his head. His back twinges right in the center, where the dressing is wrapped around his ribs. Dean winces with a grimace—and in the same instant, two fingers press gently under his jaw, tilting his chin up. The pain slips away into nothing.</p><p>“Better?” Cas asks. He doesn’t move his hand.</p><p>The ceiling pipes rattle again. They’ll make even more of a racket in the kitchen. One of Sam’s godawful plucky-acoustic playlists is echoing faintly through the walls, and it’s gonna burrow into Dean’s brain for the next half hour, guaranteed—he’s gonna make a coffee and drink it slowly, leaning against the countertop, and at least half the cup is gonna end up stolen by the same thief who hogged his sheets. Cas thumbs the corner of his mouth. Dean leans into his palm and grins, eyes closed.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says, quietly. “Yeah, I’m good.”</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>sending love 2 u all ♡ crazy how the finale was just a 5 minute montage of dean &amp; his dog. crazy</p><p>(edit 23/11: chapter two! wasn't planning on adding one but pretending spn is a slice-of-life sitcom catered to my personal tastes is how i have chosen to cope, so......here she is)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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